Yr5 Curriculum Update – 12/01/18
Working together to achieve success for every child
Our Transdisciplinary Unit of Inquiry: How the World Works
“Matter exists in different forms which can be changed and used for different purposes”
Welcome back and a happy new year to all our Year 5 families…
Hopefully, everyone feels rested and recharged after the holidays. Lots of students had exciting tales to tell this week about the experiences they had over the winter break.
Our unit on changing matter has continued this week with more classes creating their ‘chemistry cake’ and experimenting with different variables and making observations. The idea of a ‘control’ sample for comparing changes in variables has been very important to help students make sure their experiments are fair and the results are ‘valid’. Making cakes seems to have been a popular activity and children have realised that they all have a science lab at home (also known as a kitchen).
A final plug for… the chance to be “scientists of the day.” This involves the child coming into school and demonstrating an experiment or a science phenomenon to the rest of the class.
If your child would like to participate, they should research at home the experiment they would like to demonstrate and practice it at home. Your child should then come into school with all the materials they will need to carry out the experiment. They will then be asked to carry out the experiment in front of the class and be able to explain the science behind it. Please note that this is not mandatory home learning, and therefore, student participation should be voluntary.
The scientist of the day will run throughout the unit and a schedule will be created in the class so they will know which day they will be required to demonstrate the experiment.
Note the experiment doesn’t have to be complicated, the idea is to get the children to see themselves as scientists. Last year we had experiments ranging from making oobleck, floating a pin on water, creating a vacuum, and layering liquids. The experiment can be as simple or as complicated as your child wishes.
Maths
This week has been spent tuning into our new maths unit on multiplication and division. Children have been identifying where their strengths are and what they need to work on. A continuing aim of the maths that we do with children is to help them apply their understanding of maths flexibly, so we give children different strategies to apply. We are sure they will be able to show you! It is also important for the children to see maths visually, so we continue to encourage them to use manipulatives even if they have written strategies as this helps them see links between other areas of their mathematics learning. We have begun by building on the work in year 4 about arrays – these are a really important way for students to develop the concept of multiplication and division through a visual representation.
Upcoming dates for your diary:
PTA Disco – 19 January
Book Week – week beginning 5 February
CNY half day 15 February
